Field of Art
The disclosure generally relates to the field of hostless address resolution.
Description of the Related Art
Bluetooth is a short-ranged, low-powered, protocol standard that transmits data wirelessly over radio links. It was developed as a serial cable replacement technology between digital devices such as keyboards, laptops, mice, mobile cellular devices, and audio headsets. When such devices are connected in a short range wireless network they are considered to be in a personal area network (PAN). Devices in these networks connect to each other with little user input and tend remain constantly connected. While convenient for the user, minimal input and constant connection is achieved at the cost of security and power consumption. Bluetooth allows two devices to automatically synchronize and communicate after each of the devices is paired with a user inputted passkey. The passkey, a random number, and a public address of a connecting device are used to authenticate a connection. This approach is vulnerable to device tracking and can leave Bluetooth devices open to electronic eavesdropping and man in the middle attacks. Constant connections are used for Bluetooth devices that require a high throughput such as audio headsets and mobile devices. This is practical for devices that are charged frequently and have a high energy ceiling but not for devices that use smaller, low capacity batteries.
The Bluetooth 4.0 specification redirected its development away from increasing throughput to dramatically reducing power consumption. This refocusing arose from the need to service devices that are connected to body area networks that required ultra-low power consumption. Thermometers, glucose meters, blood pressure monitors, heart rate monitors, smart watches, tire pressure sensors, motions exemplify devices with the requirement for ultra-low power consumption. These devices use batteries that necessitate lower peak current and lower average current consumption in order to maintain an energy lifetime from a few months to a couple years. To achieve a lower power profile, Bluetooth Low Energy devices reduced power consumption by reducing throughput. Bluetooth Low Energy devices remain functionally off most of the time, awaking only to occasionally send short burst data packets. Shorter data packets reduce the connection time and the time a broadcasting radio needs to remain in a high power state. Power consumption was also reduced was by lessening Bluetooth functionality. This in turn lowered the dynamic memory and its constant current supply required to maintain a memory state. With the incorporation of body area devices arose the need to increase security since users tend to carry devices on their person. Using a public address makes it relatively simple to track devices and the person using them. Bluetooth Low Energy addressed this need with the introduction of private addresses resolution on a host processor, however, the host processor needs to remain powered on or awoken each time an unknown device attempts to connect. This causes an unnecessary increase in power consumption. Therefore there is a lacking mechanism to provide for private address resolution used in Bluetooth Low Energy devices that does not require operation for the host processor.
The figures depict various embodiments for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following discussion that alternative embodiments of the structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles disclosed herein.